Israel In Real Trouble With U.s. Because Of Stonewalling In Pollard Spy Case

COMMENTARY

September 10, 1987|By WILLIAM SAFIRE, The New York Times

Throughout the United States government, the cause of Israel has suffered a steep decline in the last year.

At the Defense Department, jubilation prevails at the shooting down of Israel`s bid for techological independence in the international aircraft market. The U.S., which had been paying the bills for developing the Lavi fighter, forced the Israeli Cabinet to bow to the inevitable.

At the State Department, the star of Syria`s Hafez Assad is rising. The most potent and implacable of Israel`s enemies is no longer being exposed as the center of terrorism; instead, Damascus is being courted at Foggy Bottom as if its savage regime had turned over a new leaf.

At the National Security Council in the White House, the decision was made to support Arab Iraq against Persian Iran in the gulf war -- a strategy bitterly opposed by every visiting Israeli Cabinet official.

What`s the reason for the fall of Israeli influence? Some point to the backlash from the Iran arms-for-hostages swap, or the ascendance of the Arab- leaning national security adviser, Frank Carlucci. Others find the cause in the two-headedness of the coalition government in Jerusalem.

The underlying reason for Israel`s new impotence here, in my view, is in information still being developed at the Justice Department. The festering Pollard spy case -- and the refusal of Israel`s aging leaders to face up to the urgent need to treat the source of infection -- makes possible the defeat of Israeli economic, anti-terrorist and strategic arguments all through the U.S. government.

Pollard? Wasn`t the American traitor hired to provide a roomful of secret documents to Israel convicted and jailed? Wasn`t the Israeli general who handled the operation indicted here and induced to resign his air force commission? Most Americans and Israelis think the story ended with that, and with the absolute guarantee from the Shamir-Peres coalition that such spying has stopped.

But the Pollard case is far from over. While the jailed spy is conveniently forgotten by the government that used him, two prominent former Israeli officials remain protected by a fearful political establishment.

Rafi Eitan and Avraham Bendor are legendary figures in the world of espionage. Together they led the team that kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960 and brought that war criminal before the bar of Israeli justice. Eight years later, the same two Mossad operatives appeared at an Apollo, Pa., nuclear processing plant, and following their visit 587 pounds of U.S. weapons-grade uranium was reported missing.

Bendor, using the alias ``Avraham Shalom,`` rose to the top of the internal security service, Shin Beth. When a news photograph provided evidence that his men murdered a couple of Palestinian terrorist pris oners, his agency was caught trying to frame an army commander; however, Bendor and his aides resigned and received a presidential pardon.

Rafi Eitan did fairly well, too. He headed Lekem, an intelligence unit set up outside Mossad to provide deniability by high officials, which recruited the Pollards (and perhaps another American unknown to the Pollards) to steal U.S. secrets. When the operation blew up, Eitan also resigned and was rewarded with a top state-owned industry job.

To give the appearance of an investigation, Prime Minister Shamir -- who served a decade in the Mossad -- appointed a non-judicial board, which issued the expected whitewash. A Knesset committee under Abba Eban waggled a finger but could not penetrate the wall of secrecy.

However, U.S. officials who talked to Eitan under a grant of immunity believe he lied to them; as a result, a grand jury in Washington may indict him one of these days, along with two Israeli diplomats who were spirited out of the country as the Pollards were caught. Bendor is suspected of aiding the cover-up of his sidekick`s ``renegade`` activity.

None of the Israelis charged with espionage here will be returned to stand trial; instead, they will continue to be protected by a coalition of cover-up in Jerusalem that puts a personal fear of the exposure of ministerial involvement ahead of the long-term security interests of the state.

What has the unconscionable stonewalling done for Israel? Let`s see; aircraft workers are unemployed, Syria`s Assad is rehabilitated, objections are muted to the pro-Arab tilt in the gulf war, Israel`s U.S. supporters are sick at heart -- and that`s only the beginning.